


a sea of stars

by elmshore



Series: Wayhaven Week 2020 [3]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Other, because we all need some soft!Mason, but it's mostly just fluff, the angst comes from Mason's own crisis of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25263109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmshore/pseuds/elmshore
Summary: Mason accompanies Cordelia on a late-night stargazing trip. She opens up about a very personal matter and Mason is left to wrestle with his growing feelings.
Relationships: Detective/Mason (The Wayhaven Chronicles), Female Detective/Mason (The Wayhaven Chronicles)
Series: Wayhaven Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827454
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	a sea of stars

It’s well past midnight when they reach the top of the small hill, the lights from the tiny city of Wayhaven twinkling below.

Mason stops and, carefully, sets the large bag slung over his shoulder down onto the ground. As he does so, Cordelia falls into step beside him and he tosses a glance her way. 

Even through the dark, he can see her in perfect clarity — cheeks flushed from the trek through the woods and up the hill, strands of red hair flying away from the messy bun she swept her hair into before they began the walk. She’s clad in a dark, cardinal red shirt that is entirely too big for her (apparently, it belonged to her father), and the white MIT logo on the front is chipped and worn, nearly gone by this point. The shirt hangs low, past her hips, and coupled with the faded jeans and sneakers, she looks...different. 

He’s used to seeing her in tight pencil skirts and bright blouses, always so put together and proper.

Right now, she looks comfortable, at ease, and he kind of likes it. Of course, it helps that she’s also wearing his jacket. She’d swiped it from him the moment they were out of the car, and there is something about the sight of her in it, of knowing that she is wearing a piece of his clothing, that sends a bolt of desire — and something else, but he doesn’t stop to think about  _ that _ — coursing through him.

He wonders what she might look like with  _ only _ the jacket on and drags his tongue across his lower lip at the image. 

Oh yeah, definitely going to have to work toward that goal.

“This spot looks good, you think?”

Her voice brings him crashing back to reality and he grunts, eyes moving away from her and back to the city below. “Not my call, sweetheart. This was your idea.”

“You didn’t have to come, you know,” she teases, but he hears the uncertainty in her voice. It pricks at him and he shrugs, trying to ignore it.

“You invited me, and who am I to turn down the chance to spend a night with you,” he drawls, takes a step closer, and hears her heart speed up. “Especially when we’re all the way out here, alone.”

The color staining her cheeks deepens and her lips part, tongue darting out to wet them, and Mason’s eyes are drawn to it instantly. She notices, too, and quickly looks down at the blur of Wayhaven. “I should, uh, set up the blanket,” she says, voice higher than normal, and takes a few hurried steps away from him.

Mason doesn’t even bother to hide his smirk. Flustering her has quickly become one of his favorite pastimes.

Cordelia unfurls the blanket previously kept tucked under her arm and spreads it out on the grass. She takes a few moments to smooth it out, fights with a corner that won’t stay flat, and then turns to look at him. “Is this okay? I thought a blanket might help, I didn’t know if the grass would bother you,” she says, teeth catching her lower lip, brows drawn in thought. “Maybe I should have brought a second one?”

There she goes again, worrying about him. Just like all the times before, it creates a weird bubble of emotion in his chest — one that presses right up against his heart, knocking against it. Cordelia is always doing this, making sure he’s okay, checking to see that he’s not getting too overwhelmed or overloaded by whatever is going on around them.

Before — before Murphy, before Sanja, before  _ all _ of it — he would have scoffed. Made a snide remark and brushed her off. Now, though, now he doesn’t do any of those things. He knows her concern is sincere, that she truly does care about making sure he is comfortable, and though it still confuses him, there is a part of Mason that is grateful.

She’s the first person, outside of the team, to really care about his own well-being.

So instead he chuckles, shoves a hand in his pocket, and says, “I’m a big boy, sweetheart. I can handle some grass.” Her laugh is soft and lilting and makes the bubble under his heart swell.

Mason doesn’t tell her that, for some reason, whenever she’s around him, the world feels softer. That all of the sensations that normally leave him gritting his teeth and reaching for a cigarette fade to a dull edge. How all he hears is the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, or how all he can smell is her — sweet and crisp, a scent that lingers even when she leaves, one he knows will be all over his jacket by now.

No, he doesn’t tell her any of that, because he doesn’t even really understand it. Refuses, in fact, to linger on the thought, because if he does, it’ll settle in and put down roots and that just won’t stand.

She moves, the action drawing his attention back to her, and reaches for the bag he carried up the hill. As she sets about opening it, Mason shuffles closer and lowers himself onto the blanket, content to watch her.

Gently, she pulls out the telescope and begins setting it up. She places it on the grass, right at the edge of the blanket, and adjusts the angle of the lens. The way she handles it, it might as well be made out of gold, and from the precision of her hands, it’s clear she’s done this plenty of times before. 

Which makes sense, she’s a nerd all round, but she’s  _ really _ a nerd for space.

Not that he can say too much, of course. Mason likes the stars, they’ve always been silent but constant companions, something to focus on when the world becomes too much and he needs to be alone, away from everyone and everything. Except, he’s not alone now, and shockingly, he’s fine with that.

She’s not like others, never pushes or crowds him, always lets him breathe. Understands him, even when he doesn’t say a word.

_ One day, you'll trust her more than you trust yourself. _

Yet again, those damn words come back to haunt him. The voice of the fortune teller echoes in his head and Mason shakes it, a snarl just on the tip of his tongue. They were just words, empty and meaningless, meant to seem mystical and foreboding, but holding no value. Nothing he should take seriously. 

And he’s not, taking them seriously, that is.

“So,” he says, in an effort to get anything else on his mind, “what brought on this little idea? Because I can think of a few other things we could do out here,” he adds, hears the ping of her pulse spike, and throws in, “I mean, we already have the blanket.”

“It’s the anniversary.” 

“The what?”

“The anniversary,” she repeats, shaky, and turns to look at him. “Of my dad’s death.”

Oh. Well, shit.

His mind trips over the words, tries to come up with a response, and fails. Luckily, she keeps talking.

“It’s just, this is a tradition I started, when I began attending MIT,” she explains, hands fidgeting in her lap, each word tumbling out quicker than the last. “I wasn’t able to visit him, when I was in school, so I would look at the stars for him.”

“Why bring me, then?”

The question hangs in the air between them and he watches as she tenses, eyes darting away from his own. 

“I just — ” she stops herself, takes a breath, and continues, “I thought you might enjoy it? The telescope is quite nice, and you seem to enjoy looking at the stars.”

It’s not what she meant to say and he knows it, but he keeps that to himself. She didn’t want to be alone, and for some wild reason, she chose  _ him _ to include in this tradition of hers. That pressure against his heart gets heavier and he draws in a sharp breath, feeling like there’s not enough air.

Why would she want him here? He’s not good at this, doesn’t know the words to say or things to do — hell, he’s never been in this position, or at least, not that he can remember. And even if he did, Mason doubts the memories would do him any good.

“Mason?”

She is staring at him, hazel eyes wide and hopeful and  _ fuck _ . That bubble bursts, spills out, and something warm coils around his heart, an emotion he doesn’t have a name for filling him, slamming into him like a tidal wave.

Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck. _

His hands are shaking, fingers twitching for a cigarette he knows isn’t there — he left them in her car, tossed them onto her dashboard before getting out — and so he lifts one, rakes it through his hair, the motion doing little to calm whatever the hell is going on with him.

At some point during his crisis, she’s moved closer and the warmth of her seeps into him, soothes the frayed edges of his nerves enough to stop the shaking. He drags his eyes away from her, sets them on the treeline behind them, and lets out a breath.

“So you decided to bring a vampire out to stargaze, on the anniversary of your dad’s death?”

It’s meant to be snide, but his tone holds no bite, and she just smiles at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a hand move toward him, but she catches herself and snatches it back and he tries, fuck does he try, not to think about the way he wishes she would touch him. Stomps down on it, hard and fast.

“Not just any vampire,” she says, quietly, “only you.”

Mason whips his head back around and stares at her. How the fuck is he supposed to respond to that? To the weight in those words, the force of it slamming into him and knocking the air from his lungs. That sensation around his heart clenches and he swallows, mouth dry. 

She waits for his response, patient as ever, and he struggles to find something to say. Builds sentences, erases them, and starts over. Nothing sounds right, so he just snarls and tears his eyes away from her, locks them on the telescope, and says, “How good is that thing?”

“Oh, well it was a gift from one of my dad’s friends at NASA,” she answers, her own gaze drawn toward the telescope now. “Dad used it for his job as an astronomer, before he joined the Agency. He gave it to me, for my sixth birthday, just before he — ” her voice drops off and she clicks her tongue, starting over. “We used it to look at the stars together. We’d spend hours just looking up at the sky, it drove Mom crazy. He could tell you the name and mythos behind every constellation and planet.”

There is a tinge of sadness overlapping her overs and without meaning to, Mason leans closer to her.

“He loved the stars so much.”

“So what you’re saying is, he’s where you got the nerdiness from?”

She laughs and the brightness of it fills him, leaves him wanting to hear it again.

“I guess you could say that,” she admits and when she looks back at him, there is a twinkle in her eyes, and the smile she wears makes his own lips twitch in response. He raises a hand and drags it over his mouth, wiping it away.

“Do you want to look first?”

Mason hesitates at the offer, a war raging within himself, and then nods. “Sure.”

Cordelia practically beams at his acceptance and moves back, allowing him better access to the eyepiece. He scoots over, gets to his knees, and takes a second to adjust the angle to better suit his height. Then, he leans down, presses his eye against the metal piece, and sucks in a sharp breath.

A sea of glittering stars fill his vision. He lets out a low whistle and, very slowly, turns the telescope, body twisting to follow it, soaking in the view. His vision is nothing to laugh at, vampire senses and all, but this is something else entirely.

“This thing is no joke,” he murmurs, pausing in his exploration of the night sky to lift his head and look at her, only to wish he hadn’t.

She is watching him, gaze soft and lips curved into a gentle smile, and that damn feeling comes back in full force. It erupts in his chest, consumes his heart, and tears through him. He is warm, in an entirely new way, something foreign and yet...not unpleasant. The sheer weight of this moment is not lost on him, either — this is special for her, a thing close to her own heart, and here she is, sharing it with him. It feels…nice?

Yeah, nice. That’s a good word for it, a safe word, a simple one. Nice.

Then, she looks skyward, breaks the contact and a ripple of relief, mingled with disappointment he pretends  _ definitely _ isn’t there, flits through his chest and he quickly turns his own attention back to the stars shining above.

“Dad is the reason I worked so hard to get into MIT, why I pursued a degree in astrophysics,” she whispers, a wobble in her tone that catches him off guard and leaves him stumbling. “He just alighted a passion for the cosmos in me. I wanted to learn all about it, I wanted — ” the words skid to a halt as she steadies herself and then, “I wanted to finish what he couldn’t, I guess. To see the stars he wasn’t able to see.”

Mason pulls back from the telescope and turns to look at her, to really look at her. She’s not crying, but there is a shine to her eyes and she chews her lower lip, to keep it from trembling. Grief is, well, it’s not an emotion he’s all that well-versed in. He’s yet to be in a situation where he’s had to deal with it, and suddenly, it feels like there is a great expanse between the two of them, a gulf he’s not sure he knows how to cross.

Still, he decides to take a leap of faith, to ignore the bells going off in his head. Reaches for her, lets his hand cover her own, and when her fingers lace through his, he squeezes. The touch sends pinpricks up his arm and all across his skin, but he doesn’t mind. It’s not a bad feeling, actually.

He says nothing, but she understands the gesture — he can see it in her eyes and it strikes him, again, how well she can read him. How more often than not, they don’t seem to need words to communicate.

Again, the voice of Sanja echoes in the back of his mind and as he watches her, listens to her soft breathing and the cadence of her heart, allows himself to soak her in, Mason wonders if maybe — just  _ maybe _ — the fortune teller had a point. Lets himself dare to think, for a brief moment, that perhaps this might mean something. And wonders, hesitantly, if that would be such a bad thing.

In the distance, a bird calls, and the moment shatters. Falls around them like rain and he draws back, fingers tingling with the feel of her. She turns away too, wipes at her eyes, and clears her throat. 

“Did you want to keep looking?”

He does.

They spend hours on the little hill, taking turns with the telescope. Every so often, she’ll point out certain stars or constellations visible in the sky. Sometimes, he beats her to it, and the look of happy surprise on her face is a nice little boost to his ego.

Along the way, she tells him more about her dad — bits and pieces — and he listens quietly. Absorbs her words, this part of herself that she feels comfortable offering to him. Enjoys the sound of her voice and the easy way she holds herself at his side.

He is content to let this be enough, for now, until he — until  _ they _ — are ready to consider the possibility of more.

**Author's Note:**

> Day three prompt! This one was 'Aurora' and well, I kind of stretched it but, oh well. This was originally something totally different, but upon rewrite, turned into something wholly new and I'm kind of happy with it now. Mason is probably wildly ooc here, oops.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Kudos, and comments, are appreciated if you're inclined!


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